AD
by Shagel
Summary: There is only one thing that drags people to each other - desire to be needed. And even after death Booker cannot leave her


**Columbia**

When Booker meets her for the first time, she pisses him off. Moreover, makes mad. She fusses around, as if he is her savior, and some fucking prince on a white horse from stupid children books. She looms behind the back and comments on everything that catches her attention. Rounds eyes, surprised by something, and Booker somehow imagines her beautiful eyes popping out of the orbits on her pretty face and jump on the cobbled pavement joyfully. He frowns and rubs temples.

She suits to this world, bright, colorful and so intense that he has red stains flashing under the eyelids and headache by the end of the first day. Probably, the thing is that he just has to drink something hella strong. Damned alcohol, damn three times, that's all he needs now and not to toddle this curious young lady. Booker wipes weariness from the face, then stares at whitish scars on the back of right hand, damn AD roast brain, he knows what they mean, **Alcohol Dependence** , and if she doesn`t shut up right now, with her continuous stream of enthusiastic exclamations, he`ll break that strange contract with a strange couple and divert Elizabeth`s attention, _oh, she is so easily distracted,_ and then he`ll disappear in the alley, get her and her Paris out of his head, and its complete bad luck and failure as a detective as well. He`ll have a bottle in the pocket before evening and will be deadly drunk. Fucking city can go to hell.

But that doesn`t happen. She finally shuts up, looking at his face, quite expressive by the way. Booker sits on a bench with his eyes closed, leaning back and enjoys the silence. Pretty comparative silence, because Columbia bursts of the sounds: birds singing, the music of the old gramophones, people`s conversations. He sits and thinks about alcohol, feeling the tension in his feet, they are ready to pick up and carry to the nearest shop, but he fights with the desire. Because he knows it won`t lead him anywhere. And it's not just that girl he has to deliver to the destination point to cover the debt; the fact is that even if he gets drunk as a lord, this city will not let him go away.

Oh, this city and this girl are annoying.

A few days later, he realizes that this girl is not so bad, at least she is capable to finding things he needs -weapons and medical supplies. He doesn`t even let her touch him to bandage wounds. For god`s sake he doesn`t want her to collapse at the sight of blood and a hole in his side. But sometimes Booker even responds to some of her questions. He tries to be particular in his speech and says nothing about things she, _in his opinion_ , does not need to know. As the fact that he is not her savior, but a simply doomed man. Desperate.

The hunger for a glass or two of whiskey fades, but it has its own disadvantages. When you lock yourself in a room three x three meters, and place the bottle in front of him, you know how it`s gonna end. Oblivion. Void that doesn`t try to drill a hole in your brain. So he starts killing with an impressive calmness and persistency. A city in the sky, despite its bright and colorful cover turns to be an old rotten apple inside. _Shitty town with no place to drink_ , he thinks and shoots down another bandit from ten-foot distance. But the girl is not that bad. She panics only once. Everything starts with a huge knife in his palm, it hits these damn AD exactly, the hit is so heavy that the right hand is nailed to the top of the table, and he has to make the effort to pull out the blade that stuck in the wood. And turn a couple of times, cutting his hand even more. The pain is so strong that the whole arm is like on fire. Elizabeth screams, trying to run away from the bandits dressed as policemen. _I knew this town is a shit_ , thinks Booker, _it`s rotten through and through, and law means nothing here_. It takes ten minutes to murder all those who wanted to kill him so badly. And more than an hour to calm down the girl who finally realizes that a savior is quite a comparative thing. Especially comparing with things written in books.

But whether she is so stupid, or much smarter than he thinks, but they still go together. And now Booker no longer wants to drink. At night, he sees the same dream again - at the table, in a room of three x three meters with bare walls and nothing to look at, but instead of a bottle in front of him sits Elizabeth and stares at him. She watches as if she knows everything, even things he tried to forget so much. And now, when he looks at his hand, tied with a white cloth band, _so she didn`t collapse at the sight of the wound, that`s my girl -_ Booker is so proud of her. But conscious eats him alive.

But he is not ready to get used to her.

 _Damned loneliness,_ Booker thinks, _it makes you hope that someone needs you_. Their talks between gunfire fights become more interesting and deeper as if she managed to find some key to his despair with a white rag on his hand.

He is not interested in her new haircut or jewelry - a bird or a cage – or the fact that she is the Comstock`s daughter, or how she helps him to kill them all. He even doesn`t know who helps whom. His heart loses a beat only once. When he sees her hunched in monstrous chair with wires sticking out of her back. He almost lost her. He ties the laces of the corset, remembering that first night, when he was sitting on the bench, desperately eager to get away as far as it`s possible. He wished he had run. Because when someone becomes important for you, sooner or later you begin to fear you`ll lose her. And in their story he is the first to die.

Booker no longer thinks about the debt, looking indifferently at two whitish letters on the palm of the right hand. Surely he cut them himself when was deadly drunk. **Acknowledgement of Debt** , that's what they mean. No debt is not worth what he feels today. _You just desperately want someone to need you_ understands Booker and shields Elizabeth with his body.

When she is drowning him, Booker sees her through the water flow, everything is blurred, the head cracks of the lack of oxygen, and the throat goes shaking.

She turned out to be his daughter. Maybe it's for the better, because improper thoughts overwhelmed him.

 _She needed me at least_ , thinks Booker _, I`m so tired_ ... other Elizabeths surround him, they similar like drops of water. Damn, how ridiculous it is - joking about water now.

Maybe he drove mad or hallucinating – long trembling silhouettes, stretching hands at once, and then the last thought comes _nothing is over yet_.

Water squshes in the lungs.

 **Rapture**

When he meets her for the second time, he doesn`t know what he feel to her.

And he thought that a city in the sky - is terribly vulgar. Booker looks through the window and all he can see - is darkness. Thick layers of cold water press on the glass and add a shade of claustrophobia to his disgust. Just think, if only a tiny crack appear, the whole abyss of darkness and salty ocean will cover him and smash. Surely this is some perverted redemption. The last time he died of the water, and now fears to throw a glance out of the window because feels the sticky fingers of fear on his neck.

 _As I thought, nothing is fucking over yet_ , Booker leans back and pulls drawers, one after the other in search of precious bottle.

He clinks the glass pouring himself half a glass of whiskey, looking at it for a long time, turning in his hand, as if wondering, doubting, gathering courage, then drinks at one gulp.

He knows nothing about life, if drinks himself to death, locked in a cage of the city at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, buried under worthless existence. And certainly nothing about death, because he remembers how died, but now he can breathe, walk and even get drunk, looking at the faded, but clear scars on the right hand. **After Death -** _how do you think this variant_ , he coughs, inhaling cigarette smoke, and looking at AD.

And then comes Elizabeth.

This time she prefers to remain silent, fold arms on her chest, hugging herself as if trying not to fall apart and disappear in front of him but stays close. Thin fingers pick up the gun from the floor and throw it to him, and Booker sees that the little finger on her hand is undamaged.

\- You see, Booker, - she takes a cigarette from his fingers, and once again he wonders, how her long, slender fingers differ from his own. – It`s just we are very similar. – She inhales and turns the face to the left to breathe out. - Broken attracts broken. - Tongue licks the corner of the mouth.

Such a good answer to the question unasked - why she's here.

-Didn`t know you smoke. - Booker frowns and lights up another cigarette for himself. His gaze dances between the thickness of water behind the window and a glass of amber liquid. If she wants to kill him for a second time, there is enough water.

-Oh, spare me from your notations, Booker. - Elizabeth glances at him casually- You're not even my father.

-Then who?

She remains silent, as if choosing right variant of an answer.

-One of his ghosts. Probably. I don`t know. –she shrugs. - I drowned you, and here you are on the bottom of the ocean. What an irony. - Elizabeth goes to the window and looks at the fish slowly swimming by.

-Then why are you here, Elizabeth? – burnt out cigarette crumbles between Booker`s fingers, but he doesn`t notice it. Too many feelings. And he cannot find the right explanation of them now.

Well, - she shrugs, and there is a tiny speckle of smile in the corners of her lips. – After all, we all want someone to need us.


End file.
